An American friend told me about one of his experiences with Chinese medicine — what is called in America “Traditional Chinese Medicine.” He had some sort of infection that caused skin near his stomach to be damp. He tried many solutions. None worked. Then he went to a Chinese medicine doctor who prescribed certain herbs to be ingested. In a week he was better.
My take on this is that the herbs increased the sensitivity of his immune system, which then detected and got rid of the infection. Such infections are rare, of course, so rare I don’t know their name. The existence of such an infection was a sign his immune system was working very poorly. I asked my friend about his sleep. His sleep was terrible. Highly irregular. It is telling that the Chinese doctor didn’t tell him to improve his sleep, which would have vastly improved his health and reduced his future visits to the doctor.
It was a new idea to me that Chinese herbs — at least some of them — work by boosting the immune system. It makes sense: detection of some invaders should make you more sensitive to other invaders. One implication of this view is that it hardly matters which herb you take so long as it is new. My friend told another story in which his Chinese doctor changed the herbs every week or so, supporting this idea.
It was a new idea to my friend that bad sleep was causing his immune system to work poorly. My experience with colds, as mentioned last post (when my sleep improved they disappeared), means that the fact that colds are “common” implies we are a nation of poor sleepers. And, indeed, sleep problems are very common. A few years ago, I learned about a course about epidemics taught at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. I knew the professor. I asked him if the course would cover environmental factors that cause the immune system to work better or worse. No, he said. Half the subject, ignored. Just as economists rarely study innovation and statisticians rarely study how data generates ideas.
More Supporting the idea that ingesting strange but harmless substances can improve immune functioning, I found this in the latest issue of the Journal of Nutrition:
Caseins and whey proteins are the 2 major protein fractions of cow milk. Whey proteins are separated from casein curds during the cheese-making process. The major proteins present in bovine whey come from the mammary gland that secretes β-lactoglobulin (β-LG),7 {alpha}-lactalbumin ({alpha}-LA), and glycomacropeptide (GMP), and from serum, like IgG1 and IgG2, IgA, IgE, and IgM and albumin. Besides their use in functional foods, whey protein products, and more specifically whey protein-derived products, have been shown to be efficient in certain pathologies. For instance, whey proteins inhibited gastric ulcerative lesions induced by ethanol or indomethacin, inhibited chemical-induced malignancy in mice, improved bone loss of ovariectomized rats, and reduced hyperglycemia in type 2 diabetic patients (1—5). Moreover, in vitro and in vivo studies have demonstrated modulation of immune functions by several whey protein-derived products (6,7). As examples, β-LG, the most abundant protein in whey (55—65% of total whey proteins), stimulates the proliferation of murine spleen cells and lamina propia lymphocytes (8,9). It is also useful to stress that researchers have shown that probiotics expressing β-LG can be used to manage food allergy (10). The 2nd most abundant whey protein, {alpha}-LA (15—25% of total whey proteins), modulates macrophage and B- and T-lymphocyte functions (11). Moreover, the {alpha}-LA—derived peptide f51—53 directly affects neutrophils (12). The 3rd most abundant whey peptidic component, GMP, can affect immunity and attenuate inflammatory colitis in rats (6,13,14). At optimal concentrations, the other bioactive whey-derived proteins like Ig and lactoferrin present in whey protein extract (WPE) can also exert immune modulatory functions (6,7).
I didn’t know this–that ingesting milk products had good effects on immune function. That probiotics can be used to manage food allergies isn’t explained by the idea that foreign substances make the immune system more sensitive.
In a similar vein, the “Damn Interesting” website did a nice article on Coley’s Cancer-Killing Concoction which worked on the principle of stimulating the immune system to fight cancer.
Health benefits derived from milk products is vastly increased when raw milk (i.e., non-pasteurized) is used. The Weston Price foundation (https://www.westonaprice.org/) describes this in detail. I’ve switched to consuming raw milk and cheese derived from raw milk every day. I also started drinking Kefir which contains a compliment of pro-biotics. One thing I’ve noticed is a great reduction in gas and sensitivity of the stomach.
Very interesting. Raw milk obviously has more of what our immune system is designed to protect us against. Perhaps modern too-clean food tends to put our immune system to sleep. Just as modern conveniences may cause us to get too-little exercise.
hm, i wonder how shepherd versus farming cultures fared against colds, if shepherd cultures drank more milk.
milk also might put you to sleep, as has been discussed on this blog before, and kids tend to consume it. kids are notoriously sensitive to colds, so they’d maybe need something to help them bolster their immune system–sleep and introduction to novel stimuli to keep their immune system on its toes, both possibly provided by milk.
Seth, I don’t have the link, but within the past year there has been interesting research that humans with tapeworms have fewer allergies. The researcher hypothesized that there is something in the tapeworm that suppresses immune response in the host to enable the tapeworm to stay unmolested. The host gets the benefit of reduced allergies to pollen, pet dander, etc.
By self-experimentation, he found that a few tapeworms is the correct “dose” for maximum relief from allergies. More than that and he felt sluggish. He tried it on people who wanted to own cats but couldn’t due to allergies — it worked, and at the end of the trial, most declined the drug that would kill the tapeworm!
Seth,
My understanding of the literature is that raw milk, like other naturally occurring foods, actually doesn’t have more of what our immune system was designed to protect against. But raw milk can be collected under unsanitary conditions allowing the promotions of bacteria. Such contaminated milk has bacteria (foreign particles) that can be unsafe for humans. But the milk itself if not contaminated does not contain dangerous compounds that our immune system would try to take care of. Pasteurization kills bacteria and thus drastically reduces the potential for consuming contaminated milk. But we must be careful to distinguish between the natural constituents of the raw milk itself and foreign contaminants.
Tom, thanks for reminding me of the tapeworm research. My interpretation is that the tapeworm was constantly excreting a small amount of foreign substances into the blood and this caused the action threshold of the immune system to be raised. So long-term exposure to foreign substances raises the threshold. Whereas the Chinese herbs, taken for less than a month are an short-term effect that lowers the threshold.
Aaron, I meant that raw milk has a lot more live bacteria than pasteurized milk.
Chinese customs recommend good sleep habits (early to bed, consistent and long) to deal with all sorts of low-level health problems that we lump together as ‘heatiness’. Common colds are often attributed to heatiness as well. For instance, I have tended to sleep late, at 2-3 am most days, and I’m paying for it with an endless stream of mouth ulcers, which are another symptom of ‘heatiness’. I guess what heatiness really means is a general reduction in one’s immunity. So the custom squares with your theory..
“He had some sort of infection that caused skin near his stomach to be damp.”
I think before one speaks about whether a certain treatment worked, and why, the first step is establishing whether a person really has a medical problem, or whether they are a psychosomatic nut case. “Some sort of infection”? “Damp stomach skin”? Let’s get a real diagnosis first. Damp stomach skin is an non-existent condition.
Mark, it was a red rash with discharge located near the belly button.
For the treatment of sleep disorders, Chinese herbs can be quite effective. However, due to the high number of different herbs and different types of sleep disorder, it is quite difficult to find the right herb.